In John Balazs' RAGE, rape, murder and vengeance all add up to boredom

Despite its relatively early scene of maximum violence (a murder, then a rape, then a beating and attempted murder), the new Australian movie RAGE really ought have been entitled Enervation, so slow-moving and unnecessarily lengthy is the road to would-be vengeance that this surprisingly tiresome film then takes. 

As directed by John Balazs from a screenplay by Michael J. Kospiah, the filmmaker wastes way too much time on "establishing shots" that, once established, just go on and on and on. The filmmaker likes to linger -- which, in this kind of movie, proves deadly. It occurred to TrustMovies, as he was watching, that Mr. Balazs should have perhaps chosen a better editor. But then, as the end credits rolled, he discovered that Balazs himself had edited the movie.

The filmmaker, shown at right, keeps us waiting an awfully long time to learn stuff we ought to have already known -- and then he informs us via a scene of sudden, lengthy exposition. More than one and one-half hours into things, the husband says to his wife, "I can't believe this is happening to us." You will likely echo that sentiment once you realize that you still have another 50 or so minutes left to go.

Then, after so little has happened for so long, convenient coincidences start piling up. At a snail's pace, of course. 

The movie is full of wretched policemen, wretched police work, and, I'm afraid, not very good filmmaking. All of which, it turns out, is supposedly based around poor communication between spouses. Hmmm.

Performances are as good as can be expected under these circumstances, with the three leading actors -- Matt Theo (above) as the husband, Hayley Beveridge (below) as the wife, and Richard Norton (two photos below) as the chief investigating officer -- carrying us along as best they can.

Technical credits, outside of the direction and editing, are very good, as well, and the ideas the film presents are worth considering. Yet the manner in which they're presented leaves so much to be desired that when the movie's biggest "surprise" turns out to be the linchpin of an old Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV episode, you'll find yourself ready to cry "uncle."

From Gravitas Ventures and running two hours and 24 minutes (yes!), Rage opens digitally on all major VOD platforms in North America, with a Vimeo On Demand release in Australia, this coming Tuesday, Feb. 23rd.  

Filmmakers probe actor, discover nothing at all in Ott & Silver's ACTOR MARTINEZ

Have you ever wondered why it is that certain indie filmmakers find actors -- their inner and outer lives -- so goddamned interesting, while most audiences (even those who treasure indie films) would rather run for the hills than sit through a documentary exploring an actor's psyche. If the performer is hugely talented and/or a well-known celebrity, there's a built-in hook, of course. Otherwise, actors are pretty much dime-a-dozen, usually quite self-involved, narcissistic and boring (TrustMovies was one, way back when, and he, too, fit that profile all too well). So as subject for a film, actors are mostly tiresome. Two fairly recent, failed examples of this kind of ersatz documentary come immediately to mind, both by Robert Greene -- Actress and Kate Plays Christine -- and now we have yet another one opening this week, which is perhaps the most tiresome of them all: ACTOR MARTINEZ from Mike Ott and Nathan Silver (shown below, with Mr. Ott on the left).

The film's backstory can be more easily understood via the press release than from the film itself, so I will give it to you, verbatim, below:

Being in show business is tough, but being an actor in Denver is tougher, so when performer and full-time computer repairman, Arthur Martinez, hires two indie filmmakers to make a feature film with him as the lead, he realizes he’s in over his head. “You guys have ruined my life,” Arthur says one moment immediately following with, “This is the best film I’ll ever be in.” The filmmakers scrap the genre film Arthur had intended them to make — instead quickly designing an entirely new project based around his real-life persona, which becomes more and more elusive as the production steams ahead. Once Arthur realizes what the filmmakers are up to, his protective measure is to hide behind a mask, keeping the filmmakers questioning: are any of Arthur’s moments on camera truthful or is it all just a performance in the end?

To which you might be tempted to ask, Yeah, but who gives a shit? Exactly. On the other hand, if what was described above came to vital and extraordinary life via well-chosen, closely observed and ultra-telling moments, we might be drawn in and held fast. Instead what we get is drab, tiresome, even phony moments that don't come nearly to life, let alone art of any kind. There's no style, little wit, and mostly just boring, slapdash scenes strung together to fill out 75 lousy minutes.

We sit through auditions for the role of Martinez's girlfriend (this proves the most energized portion of the doc), and eventually the part is given to indie actress Lindsay Burdge (below, center right). We watch our guy, shown above and below, repair a couple of computers along the way, and if the filmmakers had gotten more deeply into the details of these repair jobs, the movie would have been more interesting and even helpful to those of us who want to know more about the machines we're using.

Mr. Martinez (shown above, left and below) is a rather average-looking, early-middle-aged man, with no discernible acting talent that the film manages to uncover. But he's just fine at seeming like a typically boring subject for a documentary. Perhaps Denver is not the best city in the USA for would-be actors to call home.

We never get any sense of what kind of film might actually come out of all this, except to suspect that whatever it turns out to be will bore us to within an inch of our life. I have to admit that the final line of dialog is funny and smart. But it's the only thing in the entire movie that is. And 70 minutes is too long to have to wait for it (for whatever reason, the film offers a full five minutes of end credits).

Released via Breaking Glass Pictures, the documentary opens this Friday, March 10, at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Los Angeles; on March 17 at the Cinema Village, New York City, and the Clinton Street Theater in Portland, Oregon; and on March 24 at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe.

The photo, second from top, of the two filmmakers 

is by Melanie Ott and comes 

courtesy of Getty Images.

Anucha Boonyawatana's THE BLUE HOUR: gay dudes, spirits and a lot of ennui from Thailand

TrustMovies may simply not be well-attuned to Thai culture, if his reactions to too many of Thailand's movies are any kind of example. Though he very much enjoyed the recent How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), he has yet to climb fully aboard the Apichatpong Weerasethakul bandwagon. (He keeps trying to jump on, but by the end of the movie in question he's fallen off again.) This seems doubly odd to him because so many of the movies that make their way from Thailand over here are gay-themed -- either overtly or subvertly. The latest and very overt example is THE BLUE HOUR (Onthakan) from filmmaker Anucha Boonyawatana., whose early film Down the River I recall viewing and to some extent enjoying maybe a decade ago.

The filmmaker, shown at right, as both writer and director, has here concocted a tale of boys who meet on the Internet for sex, then bond via their need for physical closeness and caring as much as for climax. One is either an orphan (or self-orphaned), while the other has a less-than-welcoming family due to his homosexuality. The deserted public swimming pool where they meet is haunted by spirits who begin intruding on their lives in ways covert and overt. (Belief in ghosts and spirits of the dead seems even more prevalent in Thailand than does homosexuality.)

The Blue Hour is being billed (see poster above) as "a supernatural love story," though by its end the movie seems much more of a supernatural horror story or maybe a supernatural murder melange. Even so, this may be the slowest, most ennui-inducing movie dealing with bloodshed and death that I've seen in a long while.

There are, at most, half a dozen points the filmmaker wants to present here, but they take just-about-forever to unfold. Plot-wise the movie's a hash, and as lovely to look at are its non-heroes, there is a limit to our patience.

All these said-to-exist spirits are presented as creepy looking forms on the walls of the swimming pool, and since we never really see them in action (it's all in our, and/or the protagonists' mind), this makes for very low-budget, use-your-imagination filmmaking. I suppose that Boonyawatana was going for atmosphere above all. Atmosphere is indeed achieved -- but at the expense of just about everything else we might want.

From Strand Releasing and running a far-too-long 98 minutes, the movie opens today, Friday, April 8, in New York City at MoMA, in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. So far as I know, no other theatrical playdates are in the offing, but according to the IMDB, you can stream the movie via Amazon for $3.99.